Sony has introduced the world's first HDV 1080i camcorder. The HDR-FX1 Handycam® camcorder records and plays back high-definition video with 1080 interlaced lines of resolution, which may be the highest resolution (1440 pixels×1080 lines) of any consumer camcorder available. This high-resolution was achieved by using a three chip advanced HAD™ structure and a charge-coupled device (CCD) system in dichroic prism to separate color information. Colors from this video camera may be extremely accurate, and color artifacts can be greatly reduced relative to other approaches.
Three-dimensional (3-D) technology has been a century in development, yet has never really established itself in the mainstream. However, the emergence of liquid crystal display (LCD) and plasma screens, which may be better suited to rendering 3-D images than traditional cathode ray tube (CRT) monitors and televisions (TVs), in both consumer electronics and in the computer world, has fired interest in 3-D technology. Further, many recent movies were shot in 3-D using two high-resolution cameras coupled together.
With sales of high-definition television (HDTV) sets exploding, along with the availability of high-definition (HD) programming, the expectation of having personal content in HD is growing rapidly. With the development of HDTV, more and more HD content will likely be acquired in 3-D. A typical conventional approach for such 3-D acquisition is to use two separate cameras, with one for the left eye view, and another for the right eye view. However, in this approach, cameras should be perfectly aligned and the system price may be more than double the price of a corresponding single camera.